Resources used by leaders of sustainable development projects. What can be learned for environmental education

In our day and age, leaders involved in ingenious sustainable development projects plan spaces and implement practices that are beneficial to the environment. These initiatives represent a fertile source of information on the competences linked to environmental design that we should nurture in our students. In view of improving our understanding of the competences that should be developed in environmental education (EE), this study sought to identify the resources specific to an environmentally friendly design used by leaders who participated in five sustainable development projects (in sustainable urban planning and forestry). The analysis of documents and data from individual clarification interviews revealed that the main resources (cognitive, social, and affective) used by the leaders interviewed, depended not only on problem solving, but also on creative, complex, flexible, longi tudinal, adapted, patient, collaborative, humanistic, and environmental planning. Finally, this study, of which we present the effects on environmental education, shows that leaders use resources which are associated with creative individuals.